Gov. Cuomo’s Broken Promises

Gov. Andrew Cuomo ran for office four years ago promising first and foremost to clean up Albany. Not only has he not done that, but now he is looking as bad as the forces he likes to attack.

Last year, Mr. Cuomo created an independent commission that he promised could go anywhere — even his own office — to root out corruption. But a report in The Times on Wednesday showed that he never intended to keep that promise. The commission was not independent, and Mr. Cuomo’s aides blocked it whenever it tried to investigate the governor’s office or his biggest supporters.

Mr. Cuomo now says the commission, which he abruptly disbanded to make a deal with the Legislature on an inadequate set of partial reforms, was never supposed to look at his office and that because he created it, he got to call the shots.

That is hardly what Mr. Cuomo led New Yorkers to believe when he formed the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption and said it would be “totally independent.”

“Anything they want to look at, they can look at — me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” he said.

But The Times report showed that, behind the scenes, Mr. Cuomo’s office quickly began working to stop the commission from digging into any operations that might affect the governor or taint his image.

In one case, commissioners issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm called Buying Time. The commission was investigating whether unlimited donations to political parties for “housekeeping” were really a backdoor way to support candidates. Commissioners were not aware, apparently, that Mr. Cuomo was a longtime client of Buying Time. When the governor’s office found out, Mr. Cuomo’s closest aide, Lawrence Schwartz, called a commission co-chairman and demanded that he “pull it back.” Unfortunately, the commission rescinded the subpoena and only reissued it weeks later.

Then, despite Mr. Cuomo’s earlier promises, Mr. Schwartz argued that the commission could investigate only legislators, not the governor. And he shut down a subpoena to the powerful Real Estate Board of New York, which includes many of the governor’s biggest supporters. The commissioners wanted to investigate whether donations from wealthy developers affected tax breaks or other legislation. The real estate board eventually complied voluntarily with the commission’s request.

When the commission managed to hammer out recommendations for slowing or ending the Albany scandals, the governor’s office tried to skew the final report with deletions and other changes that suited Mr. Cuomo’s political interests. For example, one mention of the Committee to Save New York, which was organized to support Mr. Cuomo’s agenda and spent more than $16 million from undisclosed donors, was missing from the final report. The group was the biggest lobbying spender in 2011 and 2012 before disbanding when a new state law required disclosure of donations.

The governor issued a 13-page response to The Times article that mainly elaborates on his earlier assertion that “it’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me.” Mr. Schwartz has said he was trying to advise not obstruct commissioners.

After the abrupt shutdown of the commission in March, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, demanded all the documents and unfinished work from the commission. Mr. Bharara was right to take charge. Mr. Cuomo’s administration should make sure it has turned over every document relating to the Moreland fiasco.

It’s not just Mr. Bharara’s job to clean up Albany. It is up to the voters to decide whether to go on endorsing business as usual. As the indictments and embarrassments continue (26 at latest count since 1999), New Yorkers will have to decide if their representatives are politicians they can trust, including Mr. Cuomo.